The Salvation Army partnership

The Dallas Cowboys use halftime at their annual Thanksgiving home game to raise funds for the Salvation Army and bring awareness to the charity’s red kettle campaign. It’s a 17-year relationship between the team and the charity that draws annual recognition, but its roots lie in headlines of a different sort.

‘Bad decisions’ by players led to good deeds from the Cowboys.Photo by: AP IMAGES

When asked how the relationship started, Jerry Jones said it began with the team’s player scandals of the 1990s, when Cowboys players were often in the news for the wrong reasons.

“We woke up in the middle to latter part of the ’90s and we were seeing adverse publicity relative to decisions that were being made by some of our players,” Jones said. “And so I asked my daughter, Charlotte, and wife, and said, ‘Look. We are getting all of this visibility relative to some of our bad decisions. Let’s see if we can use the visibility and interest in sports and try to help some people.’”

Nearly two decades later, the Cowboys-Salvation Army relationship is one of the more high-profile team-charity combinations in sports.